THERE
is an ancient Greek saying that there is neither life nor death but simply becoming
visible and invisible. For many people only the visible side of life is real
and what they call “my life” is the span between birth and death.
We are so concentrated on the waking state of our consciousness that we often
forget that there are other and even more important states of consciousness.
In moments of inspiration, admiration and high devotion we contact such higher
states and feel the wholeness of life. Things of the outer world are then seen
in their right perspective and the reality of the inner worlds becomes more
and more vivid.

What
we call life and death are closely interwoven, as spirit and matter are interwoven,
and form a whole.

Fear
is a characteristic of our time, not only fear of death but fear of life too.
People are afraid of losing their beloved ones, their job, their money, their
health. They are afraid of war with all its atrocities and devastations. There
is a general feeling of uncertainty nowadays in every respect. There are only
two facts which are certain for everyone: the beginning of life on earth, called
birth, and the end of it, called death. If one considers these two as isolated
facts one will not grasp their deep meaning. Only in trying to understand life
in its wholeness, in its visible as well as in its invisible part, shall we
become aware of its grandeur and beauty. Then everything is seen in its right
place and life and death are not any more felt as contrasts but as means for
a high purpose.

Christian
painters have painted death as a skeleton with a scythe, a very ugly and frightening
symbol of a fact in nature. How much more beautiful and nearer to truth is the
symbol of Greek antiquity: a beautiful youth holding a burning torch downwards
to extinguish the flame. Both symbols show an end but each end is a beginning
of something new. What we call life and death are closely interwoven, as spirit
and matter are interwoven, and form a whole. There is a constant dying and being
born everywhere, even in the human body where old cells are expelled and replaced
by new ones all the time. As Jeans has said: “Matter is not a state, matter
is a process.” We are living in a world of becoming and not of being;
fortunately so, because there would be no possibility of any progress if life
were static and not dynamic, constantly changing.

...that
there is no death, no end but only a change, a new opportunity for wider and
higher experiences.

Birth
and death are like two gateways, the one at the entrance to the earth, the other
at the entrance of higher worlds , both opening the road to wide fields of experience
for the human soul. Goethe is said to have said shortly before he passed over:”Now
comes the transformation to higher transformations (Jetzt kommt die Wandlung
zu hoheren Wandlungen).” He knew that there is no death, no end but
only a change, a new opportunity for wider and higher experiences.

The more
of our beloved ones have passed over before us the more we come into contact
with the invisible worlds because they remain in vivid contact with us, nay
even more than they were on earth. A French author whose name I do not know
has put this truth very beautifully in the following words:

Men believe
that death is a going away whereas it is really a secret presence. They believe
that it creates infinite distances whereas it abolishes all distance by giving
back to the spirit what had been imprisoned in the flesh. To live is often to
leave one another; to die is to come together again. For those who have gone
to the depths of love, death is a consecration and not a fall. Love can be the
more intimate, more purified and full of deepest reverence. The heart plunges
deeply into the mystery to seek those who have fled.

Real
love is independent of any outer circumstances. Oceans and continents may separate
people who love each other. It will not affect their love in the least. They
will remain united invisibly. Through experiences like these they learn to appreciate
the value and importance of the invisible which surrounds us constantly and
penetrates our everyday life. The more we are able to consider the visible and
the invisible as only two aspects of the one life the better we shall understand
the meaning of life and death, the coming into the visible out of the invisible
and the returning into the invisible from the visible.

We are
told that an angel is present at the birth of every human being, protecting
and helping the mother and the newborn, and that an angel stands at each deathbed
helping the dying person to leave the physical body. When one has stood at the
deathbed of one’s mother, one’s only child and one’s wife
then one knows something about the majesty, the beauty and the compassion of
the Angel of Death. One can never again be afraid of dying oneself, because
one has felt the blessing of this magnificent angel who is radiant love and
understanding. The Angel of Birth and the Angel of Death are like twin-brothers,
co-operating to help and sustain man in the most decisive moments of his earthly
life. During his pilgrimage on earth he is protected by his guardian angel so
that he is never without contact with the angelic kingdom. If only mankind would
recognize and realize more fully this co-operation of the angels with men it
would be more ready to co-operate with them and there would soon be less misery
and suffering in the world because the angels never judge, never condemn but
are always ready to help and to bless even those who have gone farthest astray.
They know about the wholeness and holiness of birth and death as the two aspects
of the one life.

In The
Gospel of Hermes it is said:

It is
when man treats all things with seemly reverence, remembering that all are parts
of God’s All-Holy Body, that he becomes a creature delicately balanced
between the “within” and the “without,” able to build
a bridge between the Most Highest and the lowest of the low, and so to fulfil
God’s Will for him (p.142, Notes).

To
judge or to condemn means not to have understood.

Man being
in the intermediary state between animal and god he is able to understand both,
having still the qualities of the animal and already the potentiality of a god
in himself. To judge or to condemn means not to have understood. Even if one
cannot always approve this does not give the right to condemn. Lack of understanding
is one of the reasons why men are constantly fighting each other. One of the
most beautiful experiences during Christmas time is the endeavor to give each
other as much joy and pleasure as possible, even if it is only in the form of
a prosaic present. If this attitude of mutual helpfulness could prevail the
whole year life would be so much easier and more pleasant for everybody!

If
we understood perfectly the meaning of death we would not mourn...

The great
German mystic, Jacob Bohme, has said:”Freed from all suffering is he to
whom time is like eternity and eternity like time.” Our contact with the
beloved ones who have passed over is beyond suffering because it is beyond time.
We are more one with them than we were as long as they still lived on earth
because the contact is a constant one, independent of day and night, waking
and sleeping. They have other means to reach us than they had on earth even
if we, still bound by the physical body, cannot feel their presence always.
If we understood perfectly the meaning of death we would not mourn but be glad
for those whom the Angel of Death has touched, because for them it means a liberation
from heavy fetters. The expression “to pass over” is a very beautiful
one. Death is the passing over from the visible shore of life to the invisible
one. In the German language, death is called Heimgang, a “going
home,” which it is in fact. The earth is not our home. It is a school
where we have to learn certain lessons and which we enter by being born in a
physical body. When we leave this body again, when we “die,” we
go home again into the spheres from which we have come. Our earthly life is
only a transitory state though it is an important one. Brother Life and Brother
Death are our comrades and helpers. How safe would we be if we would understand
their real nature and purpose! Death would become to us not an enemy to be feared
but a loving friend to whom we are dear. We would take death quite naturally
even if it does not come as a liberator after long physical illness and suffering
but quite suddenly and unexpectedly or bereaving us of beloved children when
they are still young. Birth and death are governed by the laws of Karma and
Reincarnation and these laws are manifestations of Divine Love, the supreme
law of all laws. We would be perfect and our lives would be perfect if we were
able to follow this law implicitly.

Each
experience teaches us something. The ugly experiences belong to transitoriness,
the beautiful ones to the eternal, because spiritual beauty is eternal. The
disagreeable happenings in our life fade away in our memory whereas the agreeable
ones remain. They are even vivified and idealized by our imagination and remembrance,
a fact which is a real blessing for us. C. Jinarajadasa has said:

If only
I could make our members feel that every beautiful experience in life is just
like a window into an experience continuous in eternity, not merely the fragment
of it which comes to us, I should feel that I have achieved something that I
came to do...The thing here below, like a flower, is exquisite, but it is exquisite
because it is a mirror of something so intensely dazzling and fascinating that
the whole heart is drawn upwards to that Life in eternity.

Life
in its purity is beautiful everywhere. It is only man who by distorting it makes
it ugly and often nearly unbearable for himself and for others. In the angelic
kingdom there is neither ugliness nor suffering. Why? Because the angels are
following the divine laws and are one with them. Therefore their world is a
world of beauty, harmony and love and to be touched by an angel means to be
blessed - even being touched by the Angel of Death!

Heaven
and hell are our own creations and we shall only reap what we have sown.

In one
of his letters Mozart has written that death is “the sum and the real
ultimate purpose of life”. This sentence is very remarkable. Mozart died
very young after a life full of vitality and most astounding artistic creativeness.
His compositions have brought to man something of the beauty, harmony and serenity
of higher worlds. At the same time his music sometimes expresses deep tragedy
and sorrow. It is almost symbolical that his last composition was a requiem.
He probably knew that he was going to pass over soon when he composed it. It
is, so to say, his death-song but a song free of all disharmony and fear, a
song freed of all earthly toil and opening the door to eternity. In calling
death the real ultimate purpose of life Mozart must have seen in it not an irrevocable
end but, as Goethe did, a transformation. He must have known or felt that his
unique creativeness would find higher and more perfect possibilities to express
itself after he had laid down his physical body. But every human being gets
such opportunities according to his or her capacities and qualities. Why then
be afraid of death if one sees in it its true nature and not in the distorted
picture and description given by some religions? Heaven and hell are our own
creations and we shall only reap what we have sown. A man who has never felt
any love would feel most unhappy in a sphere where love reigns supreme. A man
who on earth has never had any sense of beauty would feel a stranger in a world
of spiritual beauty. A man who has been full of disharmony would be unable to
respond to the harmony of the higher worlds. Each man gets what he deserves,
not only during the span of time between birth and death but everywhere and
always, and according to the divine law of love it will under all circumstances
be for his best. Fear of any kind is only caused by ignorance. For him who tries
to live according to the Law of Love there are no obstacles which do not become
means for inner growth, steps on the way to perfection. He becomes more and
more religious in the widest sense of the word, because his knowledge of the
truth becomes greater and greater. As Bacon has said: “While a little
knowledge inclineth men to atheism, a larger knowledge brings them back to religion.”

If the
fear of death could be abolished one of the darkest clouds which hovers over
humanity would be dissipated. The difficulty is that everybody has to do this
for himself so that the process of dissipation is a very slow one but each individual
who succeeds in overcoming this fear is contributing to the liberation of humanity
from one of its nightmares, because his own fearlessness can be an encouraging
example and become a stimulation for others to become fearless themselves. The
time of illness and more or less serious pain which so often precedes the passing
over can be a real ordeal but what is called death properly is in any case a
getting free from physical limitations, a moment of highest solemnity and deep
mystery. When we are mourning we think of our loss and not the gain of the beloved
one who has entered a higher realm of being, so that every mourning is a manifestation
of egoism. If we really understood the meaning of death we would be full of
gratitude that the beloved one has been freed and would help him or her by radiant
thoughts and feelings of joy to enter as smoothly as possible into the other
world which is still invisible for most of us.

There
is a beautiful sentence by Thomas Vaughan: “Ascend in piety and descend
in charity, for this is the nature of light, and the way of the children of
it.” The angels are children of light in perfection, men are on the way
to become such. The deeper man understands life in all its many aspects the
greater will become his admiration of the invisible and his mastery of the visible
and the more will he realize that he himself belongs to both, that he is not
only a citizen of the visible world but of the invisible too, that his true
home is not on earth but in heaven, that death is not an end but a beginning.
As Shelley has said so wonderfully:

Peace,
peace!

He
is not dead, he does not sleep, He has awakened from the dream of
life.